SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Med.
Sec. Dermatology
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1653680
A scoping review of models for predicting the risk of postherpetic neuralgia
Provisionally accepted
- 1Shanxi Bethune Hospital, Shanxi Academy of Medical Sciences, Third Hospital of Shanxi Medical University, Tongji Shanxi Hospital, Taiyuan, China
- 2Nursing College, Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan, China
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Objective: To conduct a scoping review of risk prediction models for postherpetic neuralgia (PHN), providing insights for clinical identification of patients at high risk and future research. Methods: China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang, VIP Database, Chinese Biomedical Literature Service System (SinoMed), PubMed, Embase, Web of Science and the Cochrane Library databases were systematically searched from database establishment to 25 October 2024, and data on the prevalence of PHN, model construction, predictors and model performance were extracted for summary analysis. Results: A total of 23 studies were included, with a high overall risk of bias. The prevalence of PHN ranged from 6.20% to 48.00%, with traditional logistic regression being the predominant model construction method. The three most frequently identified predictive factors were age, rash area and pain severity score. Additionally, 43.48% of the studies did not validate their models, and 52.17% used visualisation methods to present their models. The area under the receiver operator characteristic curve of the studies was 0.714–0.980. Two studies performed external validation; 14 studies evaluated the model's calibration, and the calibration curve coincided well with the actual curve; and 8 studies assessed the clinical benefit. Conclusions: Risk prediction models for PHN all showed good predictive performance, but the risk of bias was high, and further clinical validation is needed. In the future, research could refine variable selection and model performance evaluation to optimise predictive models continuously, aiming to develop models with excellent predictive performance and strong clinical utility.
Keywords: postherpetic neuralgia, Risk Assessment, Prediction model, Scoping review, Herpes zoster (HZ)
Received: 25 Jun 2025; Accepted: 04 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhang, Qu, Li, Duan and Cui. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Liping Cui, Shanxi Bethune Hospital, Shanxi Academy of Medical Sciences, Third Hospital of Shanxi Medical University, Tongji Shanxi Hospital, Taiyuan, China
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